Ice hockey is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hockey sticks to control, advance and shoot a closed, vulcanized, rubber disc called a "puck" into the other team's goal. Each goal is worth one point. The team which scores the most goals is declared the winner. In a formal game, each team has six skaters on the ice at a time, barring any penalties, one of whom is the goaltender. Ice hockey is a full contact sport.
The National Hockey League is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ice hockey league in the world, and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. The Stanley Cup, the oldest professional sports trophy in North America, is awarded annually to the league playoff champion at the end of each season. The NHL is the fifth-wealthiest professional sport league in the world by revenue, after the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the English Premier League (EPL).
The Stanley Cup is the championship trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League (NHL) playoff champion. It is the oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America, and the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) considers it to be one of the "most important championships available to the sport". The trophy was commissioned in 1892 as the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup and is named after Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada, who donated it as an award to Canada's top-ranking amateur ice hockey club. The entire Stanley family supported the sport, the sons and daughters all playing and promoting the game. The first Cup was awarded in 1893 to Montreal Hockey Club, and winners from 1893 to 1914 were determined by challenge games and league play. Professional teams first became eligible to challenge for the Stanley Cup in 1906. In 1915, the National Hockey Association (NHA) and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA), the two main professional ice hockey organizations, reached a gentlemen's agreement in which their respective champions would face each other annually for the Stanley Cup. It was established as the de facto championship trophy of the NHL in 1926 and then the de jure NHL championship prize in 1947.
The Western Hockey League (WHL) is a major junior ice hockey league based in Western Canada and the Northwestern United States. The WHL is one of three leagues that constitutes the Canadian Hockey League (CHL) as the highest level of junior hockey in Canada. Teams play for the Ed Chynoweth Cup, with the winner moving on to play for the Memorial Cup, Canada's national junior championship. WHL teams have won the Memorial Cup 19 times since the league became eligible to compete for the trophy. Many players have been drafted from WHL teams, and have found success at various levels of professional hockey, including the National Hockey League (NHL).
Herbert Paul Brooks Jr. was an American ice hockey player and coach. His most notable achievement came in 1980 as head coach of the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic team at Lake Placid. At the Games, Brooks' American team upset the heavily favored Soviet team in a match that came to be known as the "Miracle on Ice."
The Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) was a professional ice hockey league in western Canada and the western United States, which operated from 1911 to 1924 when it then merged with the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL). The PCHA was considered to be a major league of ice hockey and was important in the development of the sport of professional ice hockey through its innovations.
Robert Norman "Badger Bob" Johnson was an American college, international, and professional ice hockey coach. He coached the Wisconsin Badgers men's ice hockey team from 1966 to 1982, where he led the Badgers to seven appearances at the NCAA Men's Ice Hockey Championships, including three titles. During his time as the head coach at Wisconsin, Johnson also coached the United States men's national ice hockey team at the 1976 Winter Olympics and seven other major championships, including the Canada Cup and IIHF World Championships. He then coached the Calgary Flames for five seasons that included a Stanley Cup Finals loss in 1986. Johnson achieved the peak of his professional coaching career in his only season as coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1990–91, when the Penguins won the 1991 Stanley Cup Finals, becoming the second American-born coach to win it and the first in 53 years. In August 1991, following hospitalization due to a brain aneurysm, Johnson was diagnosed with brain cancer. He died on November 26 of the same year.
The Basingstoke Bison are an English Ice Hockey club from Basingstoke. They currently compete in the NIHL National League and have previously been members of the Ice Hockey Superleague and its successor the Elite Ice Hockey League.
Roller inline hockey, or inline hockey is a variant of hockey played on a hard, smooth surface, with players using inline skates to move and hockey sticks to shoot a hard, plastic puck into their opponent's goal to score points. The sport is a very fast-paced and free-flowing game and is considered a contact sport, but body checking is prohibited. There are five players including the goalkeeper from each team on the rink at a time, while teams normally consist of 16 players. There are professional leagues, one of which is the National Roller Hockey League (NRHL). While it is not a contact sport, there are exceptions, i.e. the NRHL involves fighting.
The Triple Gold Club is the group of ice hockey players and coaches who have won an Olympic Games gold medal, a World Championship gold medal, and the Stanley Cup, the championship trophy of the National Hockey League (NHL). The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) considers them to be "the three most important championships available to the sport".
The Rockford IceHogs were a minor professional ice hockey team in Rockford, Illinois. They were a member of the United Hockey League from 1999 to 2007. The IceHogs played their home games at the MetroCentre. In 2007, the name and logo were purchased and applied to the current American Hockey League franchise. After the transfer of the name and logo to the AHL franchise was complete, the UHL IceHogs ceased operations.
Junior hockey is a level of competitive ice hockey generally for players between 16 and 21 years of age. Junior hockey leagues in the United States and Canada are considered amateur and operate within regions of each country.
The Duquesne Gardens was the main sports arena located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during the first half of the 20th century. Built in 1890, the building originally served as a trolley barn, before becoming a multi-purpose arena. The Gardens opened three years after a fire destroyed the city's prior sports arena, the Schenley Park Casino, in 1896. Over the years, the Gardens was the home arena of several of Pittsburgh's historic sports teams, such as ice hockey's Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Hornets. The Western Pennsylvania Hockey League, which was the first ice hockey league to openly hire and trade players, played all of its games at the Gardens. The arena was also the first hockey rink to ever use glass above the dasher boards. Developed locally by the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, Herculite glass was first tested in Pittsburgh. Most rinks were using wire mesh before the shatterproof glass was invented. Finally, the Pittsburgh Ironmen, a charter member of the Basketball Association of America, played at the Gardens from 1946 to 1947.
Cory Pecker is a Canadian former professional ice hockey right winger. He was drafted in the sixth round, 166th overall, by the Calgary Flames in the 1999 NHL Entry Draft.
The Kontinental Hockey League is an international professional ice hockey league founded in 2008. It comprises member clubs based in Russia (19), Belarus (1), Kazakhstan (1) and China (1) for a total of 22 clubs.
The history of black players in North American ice hockey has roots dating back to the late 19th century. The first black ice hockey star was Herb Carnegie during the Great Depression. Willie O'Ree broke the NHL's black color barrier with the Boston Bruins in 1958.
The ice hockey (hockey) competitions of the 2018 Winter Olympics were played at two venues within the Gangneung Coastal Cluster in Gangneung, South Korea. The Gangneung Hockey Centre, which seats 10,000, and the Kwandong Hockey Centre, which seats 6,000, were both originally scheduled to be completed in 2016 but appear to have been completed in early 2017. Both venues contain Olympic-sized rinks.
Ice hockey, rarely referred to in the U.S. simply as "hockey", is a popular sport in the United States. Hockey in the U.S. began in 1894 when the first artificial ice rink was built in Baltimore, Maryland. Now hockey is most popular in regions of the U.S. with cold winter climates, such as the northeast and the upper Midwest. However, since the 1990s, ice hockey has become increasingly popular in the Sun Belt due in large part to the expansion of the National Hockey League to the southeast and southwest U.S., coupled with the mass relocation of many residents from northern cities with strong hockey support to these Sun Belt locations.
The World Hockey Summit was an international ice hockey conference held in Toronto on August 23–26, 2010. It was arranged by the International Ice Hockey Federation, Hockey Canada, USA Hockey, the National Hockey League (NHL), the Canadian Hockey League and Molson Coors as the title sponsor. Its theme was "global teamwork promoting the growth of the game" and emphasized development of players. The summit was organized to create eventual changes in hockey, but the Toronto Star noted that little progress had been made since the Open Ice Summit in 1999, and children playing hockey for the love of the game was still an issue. Discussions were targeted towards national hockey associations, and hockey executives and administrators, and focused on the relationship of the NHL to European leagues and ice hockey at the Olympic Games; and the futures of junior ice hockey, women's ice hockey, and international men's events including the Ice Hockey World Championships.
United States 